 Hey, welcome to Stan the Energy Man. Stan Oserman here from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies. And because you have been such good loyal watchers of this program, we're going to tag team today with the two hosts of Stan the Energy Man. I have with me today Rachel James from also from HCAT, and she's going to help me deliver what's latest and greatest in Hawaii on energy because there's been a lot going on lately. But before we get started into that, just like to remind everybody, if you had questions from last week on the hydrogen demonstration, there is a call in line here at 415-871-2474. If you want to call and ask us any questions, we can explain or go into detail if you have questions from last week. But it's been a busy, busy year and especially busy, busy summer and a busy, busy September. And things have just been going crazy. Some of the stuff that we'd like to talk to you about today and just catch up to speed on are things like the World Conservation Congress that happened a couple weeks ago and really brought a lot of folks into Hawaii to talk about sustainability and clean energy and just good all-around ecosystem, care and feeding around the world. We also had the opportunity to visit Kona this week and go to Nelha, which is a natural energy laboratory of Hawaii. And Greg Barber, over there, hosted a great conference on energy storage. We'll talk a little bit about what went on at that conference. I had the pleasure of attending the Blue Planet's very first fundraiser, Blue Planet Blue Tie Bash. This week, guest of Wally Tsuah and his lovely wife, Kim, and we had a great time there and got to listen to Wally K. in prompt two performance at the end of the evening, just go into his whole opera thing and everything. It was awesome. And just some other things that have been going on in the vicinity and talking about hydrogen and energy. So, Rachel, thanks for being here today and co-hosting with me. And let's update some folks on what we did over at the World Conservation Congress. Yes, let's. So the World Conservation Congress was really an awesome opportunity for Hawaii to showcase many of the efforts that we've undertaken over the past years, as well as a really ripe opportunity for us to see what other people who have atmospheres, much like ours, have done with their energy. And so at the Congress, there were a good number of meetings and engagement opportunities for people to learn about energy and island nations, as well as just energy efforts across the globe, really. So HCAT had our power hour Sunday the fourth. And thanks for setting that up. Thanks for being there. Thanks for showcasing. And so what your viewers saw last week was a bit of what you shared with the world, essentially, showing them just the simplicity of hydrogen energy, its practicality, its ready application, and just really showcasing the capabilities that we have with renewable energy today. Well, one of the questions I most often get answered and I got asked the question that night was, why, if this is so good, why aren't we already doing it? So what's your standard answer when somebody asks you that question? I should get a standard answer. I should get a standard answer. Depends on who it is. Sometimes I get like, well, we don't always do all the things that we should do. That probably is my standard answer. But the more practical answer is, I think people just don't realize how readily accessible it is and how advanced the technology is today. So there's not really the momentum both in policy and in practice to have it be ubiquitous. So we have a lot of work to do to educate people, to get them comfortable with the technology, learn how to apply it and learn really how it can benefit their lives. And I think that's probably our biggest challenge. And nationally, I would say that the other factor is that makes it easier for us and hard for most people on the mainland is, we don't have a dog in the oil industry or the natural gas industry or the manufacturing or vehicle industry that other states or localities in the US have. So they have a natural bent to want to keep their industry going or keep their businesses that are centered around those fossil fuels going while we have a bent to getting off of fossil fuels because we're paying the high price for electricity and things like that. So that's why I think Hawaii is a good place to start it, but because we don't have that roadblock in front of us. And it was kind of neat to have the World Conservation Congress here because was this the first time they've done it in the US? Very first time in the US. So first time in the US and they pick Hawaii to do it and showcase it. And I think Think Tech was also showing one of the clips, the trailers during the programming cycle of the World Conservation Congress advertising for Hawaii. And it had some great shots of Hawaii and great shots all around the world by National Geographic, but some really beautiful scenery in Hawaii. And it brings home the point that the reason that we really should be focused on this is for our future and our kids' future and keeping Hawaii the way it is because it is so beautiful and pristine and that's what we should be doing. I agree. The Congress was really unique. So it's fascinating because Hawaii is a leader in many ways and certainly becoming more of a recognizable leader in clean energy, but particular to the Conservation Congress. So the IUCN, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, they didn't actually come to Hawaii and choose Hawaii. So Hawaii was actually the first state to propose that the Congress be held here. So it wasn't initially a plan to have like the U.S. as proposal, but generally countries are the ones that propose and then someplace within the country is designated. So it was a unique opportunity that the IUCN hadn't really encountered before. And then they got on board with the idea and Hawaii as the state was able to convince them that not only should they bring it to the U.S., but that it should be first landing in the U.S. and Hawaii. So I think when people understand that story, they can better understand really the leadership role that Hawaii is taking in advancing clean energy initiatives and conservation efforts and really just taking care of INA and really showcasing the things that Hawaii as the state has held dear to them and evidencing how we have that historical knowledge and we have much of the technological capabilities. When you see Hawaii kind of stepped up and said we do it, but I was kind of disappointed that more state agencies and more state entities didn't get involved in it. You know, where are some of the areas where you may have seen that same? I mean, there's certain areas where you think that maybe we should have had a bigger player. We should have kind of moved forward a little bit more into that forum. So because it was a conservation Congress, I think the state as a whole really depended on DLNR, so the Department of Land and Natural Resources. They definitely carried the heavy lift in bringing it. And then all of their kind of under agencies participated and folded in. So there was definitely an effort on natural resources. But for those who are able to participate, I think they're able to see really the merger between natural resource preservation and conservation and how that plays into business and how that plays into energy and really how it's less disparate than people probably perceived it to be. So hopefully for people who attended from other agencies, they can take back some of that. It really wasn't, I mean, conservation is less just a focus on nature and more just a focus on creating a sustainable ecosystem. Right. The sustainability piece is critical. Yeah. Because there's an economic factor to sustainability. And doing what's right isn't always the cheapest thing, but you've got to do the best thing and the best thing for long term. Yep. Great. So when do you think they'll come back? Oh, that's interesting. It happens every four years. So I don't know if they'll come back one to the US and two if they'll come back to Hawaii. I'm not really sure the frequency with which they come back to previous host sites. Did you get any feedback on how it did in terms of contributing to our economy here? Because a big convention or a big conference, that's usually one of the reasons why you volunteer for that stuff is to bring money into the state. So they had over 10,000. They were projecting for about 8,000, but actually ended up with over 10,000. So I'd suspect that it was a substantial influx in income, but I actually don't know the numerics behind that. Great. Well, that's good news for Hawaii because it is about the economy and tourism is a big part of our economy right now and that was a great form to bring folks in. And that's why we built the convention center. Heck, we're going to start using it more. So those kind of things are great. So if you're out there and you have a big convention to bring to Hawaii, it's the place to bring it. It's probably cheaper than Washington DC and a lot of other big cities to just bring it here. And that includes airfare. You can get good deals on airfare when you've got the right timeframe in mind. So let's see the energy storage conference that we had over on Kona. That was a great, great event with Greg Barber and the folks at Nelha. Thanks very much. Thanks to them for hosting that and putting on a great event that was nationally, well attended nationally. The national labs were there. The Department of Energy was there. A lot of local folks were there from local energy and energy storage and businesses. Great discussions, great presentations. And really it kind of started off battery centric, which is kind of natural for energy storage. But I was really happy to see that it did start to talk about hydrogen. So both Paul Pontio and Mitch Ewan and even Pete Devlin from the Department of Energy all pitched hydrogen for energy storage and what it can do for the grid. The project said, no, HNEI is doing with UH University of Hawaii is doing with Hawaii Electric to look at hydrogen energy storage, what they're doing on Molokai and on the other islands with renewable energy storage. And it was a really great discussion, brought in some great ideas. The big focus was on if you're going to do battery storage, you have to pick the right battery for the right job. And it's not just about efficiency. It's about, are you going to really cycle the battery really low and then recharge it from a low state? Or are you going to just keep trickle charging it constantly and keeping it topped off? How big is it? All the factors that go into selecting the right battery for energy storage on the grid or on a big project or on a microgrid were all discussed in great detail and some great connections were made. Again, one of the great things about having a face-to-face discussion is you make those connections with people and have great side-detail discussions that you just don't get when you do a teleconference. So it was a great forum and a great time to work with the folks at NOHA and some great folks from the national labs, including Dr. Boryan Law, who actually worked at HCAT for many, many years way before Rachel and I worked there. We got to spend some time with him yesterday talking about what his specialty is and he's a battery expert. He works at Idaho National Labs now and we now have a really great connection at Idaho National Labs with Dr. Law. And it was a good, good forum, thanks again to Greg Barber and all the folks at NOHA. We not only had a good discussion, but we got a great tour of NOHA and one of the things that strikes me is one of the companies there and I don't remember the name of the company, but you probably can figure it out. They're the only ones there. They do desalination of deep ocean sea water. They desalinate the water, they add minerals back to the water to give it the right mineral content and they bottle it and then they send it out and it sells for a couple like five, six, seven dollars a bottle. So it's pretty expensive water, but it's a market. And what intrigues me about it is when I start talking about hydrogen and hydrogen technology to everybody, the first thing they say is, well, where's the business case stand? You know, there's a pencil out and they go, well, where do you pencil out taking salt water, desalinating it, putting some minerals back in and selling it for a zillion times before they've got you to make it? And there's a market for that. So I think it's just a matter of maybe figuring out the right business to do the hydrogen, the right way to do the hydrogen will get us a good business case. So it was really supporting me, at least emotionally and psychologically, that there's a case for hydrogen because if you can sell water for six or seven dollars a bottle in Japan, then there's probably a way we can do hydrogen here with all the natural resources we have. But we also got to see Mitch Ewing's hydrogen project down there. We got to see a lot of the operations at NOAH on what they're doing. We got to look at OTEC and talk to the experts running the ocean thermal. We had Dr. Kroc on here before talking about OTEC and that technology. It's amazing, but the challenge is that they have with corrosion and things like that on the system. And getting it net positive on the energy side, when we talked in great detail about that and really understand the technology much better now. So great, great opportunity there. And I know you've been down in NOAH a couple of times and we've had the chance to visit Greg Barber individually, but that's a really cool place and they do a lot of great stuff. One thing I didn't know about them was they're self-sustaining. They actually do not get any funding from the state. They have to sustain their own operations. So they charge rent to the companies that work down there and they're looking at growing. They're about halfway through their growth projections that they project out. So if you're looking to do some good research or develop a business that uses deep water ocean technology or just very, very cold water from 3,000 feet down, talk to Greg Barber at NOAH and they might have a place for you to set up a project. So I think it's about time for us to take a short break here. We'll be back in about a minute with Rachel and Stan. Hey, how you doing? Welcome to the Bachi Talk. My name is Andrew Lening. I'm your co-host and we have a nice program here every Friday at 1 o'clock on Big Tech Studios where we talk about technology and we have a little bit of fun with it. So join us if you can. Thanks, aloha. Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart, Turner, host of Sustainable Hawaii. Every Tuesday at noon, we talk about issues important to Hawaii's sustainability, the issues of conservation, renewable energy, land management, food and energy security, and other issues that are extremely important as the World Conservation Congress approaches in the first week of September and next year's World Youth Congress that's taking place here that's focusing on sustainability as well. Please tune in, join us as we highlight all the good things that are happening to achieve sustainability in Hawaii. Mahalo. Hi, I'm Ethan Allen, host of Likeable Science here on thinktechhawaii.com. I hope you'll join me every Friday at 2 p.m. to discover what's likeable about science. Hey, welcome back to my lunch hour, Stan Energy Man here with Rachel James, the energy woman extraordinaire. Okay. So we're having a discussion here on the break about some of the great things that are going on but one of them's ours. One of them is what we do for the state of Hawaii and that's our hydrogen implementation working group and we don't normally advertise that other than on the state website but it's open to the public and we really would like a lot more public participation in it. We do get several regulars in there including some of the local companies but Rachel, we've got the agenda here. It's on the 21st next week Wednesday, I believe. It is Wednesday at 8.30 a.m. and we're pretty good about staying on task. We go for about two hours and we discuss a number of topics which really interesting is for people who have been coming for like successive meetings they get to see projects grow and so this next meeting we'll talk a bit about Mitch's project on the Big Island, his H&EI so we'll get an update on where not only the infrastructure but also where the bus pieces are for his hydrogen project. We'll also talk about his plan for hydrogen implementation in Hawaii which I think eight years ago or so was it? He drafted a great plan. Yeah. And we're now in the thrust of implementing the plan. I think the hydrogen implementation coordinator was first of those efforts so we'll revisit kind of the pathway that he set forward. It's an update in the plan. Yeah. We'll do that. We'll talk a bit about the Kuniya Agricultural Project and that's with land platter energy. We'll also talk about Waimea Nui efforts with Paul Pontio and we'll do a bit of a recap from the World Conservation Congress, discuss some of our lessons learned as well as our time in the Hawaii Pavilion and we'll talk a bit about our efforts there at HCAT. Great. Yeah, it was the Big Island is actually one of the focal points for hydrogen and I don't think a lot of people realize that so even as part of the energy storage discussions we had at Nelha we went up to visit Blue Planet Research up there and they gave a tour to, and there must have been 75 or 100 folks is there's actually a tour there when we showed up at the ranch and got a great tour from Hank Rogers and Paul just a big group they took through but there's a lot going on in the Big Island and it really strikes me as one of the best locations in the state to really kind of kickstart hydrogen in the transportation sector and also in the industrial sector but there's some projects going on up there that I'm interested in maybe doing a couple of shows on this year that we'll talk about microgrids and off the grid communities that are being designed as off the grid communities on the Big Island and we're really, we're following those things closely and we don't advertise them much we don't talk about them much on the show but I think they're getting to the point where we kind of will start highlighting them and looking at them because these are the things that we do talk about during our implementation working group and talk about the future and how we're getting there because I think for most people in Hawaii if they just showed up at one of these meetings they'd be really surprised how far we've actually come in the last two or three years in getting hydrogen on the map in Hawaii. Another place is forklifts and other equipment tour buses and things like that. We are working a lot with the local industries and seeing where there's a ability to put hydrogen commercial off the shelf hydrogen equipment out in the warehouses as material handling equipment getting in service by local companies and helping the community college set up curriculum for helping teach how to work with fuel cells and working with some of the OEM's equipment manufacturers on them providing training for their particular type of equipment with some of the local companies. So things are happening probably not at the speed of light like most people would like but a lot's going on in Hawaii with hydrogen and I just had a great talk with Darryl Wilson who's been a guest on our show here. He's the head of Hydrogenics. I just talked to him this morning. They're out of Canada and provide quite a bit of the fuel cell equipment that we use here in Hawaii and he again definitely identified Hawaii as a place where their company wants to stay engaged and wants to help get us moving forward cause they see the real potential here. So we're really excited about that opportunity and that's kind of the topic so that we go over in our working group and we'd love to hear more from the community if there's areas where the community thinks we should be focusing or good ideas on how we can move forward. We always can take some of those those thoughts from the community. I agree, it's a good opportunity to have dialogue. So it's awesome for us to be able to get information out about what we're doing but then we also get these gems of not only critiques but also suggestions for how we can better disseminate that information. So I think it's an awesome opportunity to have some good two-way conversation. Hey, can you talk a little bit? I'm just kind of surprised to you so. Oh gosh, I don't know. A little bit about an update on what we're doing with Katie and the Center for Tomorrow's Leaders. Definitely, so Katie was a guest a couple of weeks back and we talked briefly about our project and essentially what we're wanting to do is that educational piece. So we're working with high school juniors and seniors. We have a group of five students from public and private high schools across the state and what they'll be working with us on is not only getting more information about fuel cell technology and hydrogen capabilities in Hawaii, but we're also looking to them to really capture that story and to be able to share it in a way that's relevant to their generation. So what we struggle with often in not only in hydrogen and fuel cell electronic vehicle information, we struggle generationally in making sure that the next generation, the one that we're preparing for really understands the efforts that we're undertaking and is able to plug in when we kind of hand the baton off. And so much of our work we'll be working with what they call nontraditional leaders. So people who may not necessarily be the captains of the football team or the people who stand up in front of the volunteer. Right. But people with definite skill sets that would be conducive to being effective leaders and so really building up the confidence but also providing them with the tools they'll need to be able to be effective leaders. And so our work with them will involve educating about hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles but also sharing our leadership paths, sharing with them that nontraditional leaders often are the leaders that people really need even if they're not the ones that always stand up in front. So it's a neat story between hydrogen and nontraditional leaders. We talked about it a bit a little while ago just that hydrogen is this fuel source that if we started there, people would wonder why we went to gasoline. But because we started with gasoline and now we're trying to transition to something that's a bit nontraditional, there's a bit of hesitance there. And so what we're really working to do is to evidence the applicability and how readily applicable it is but also how relevant it is and how much it's needed and how it's really the way that we should be directing our efforts. Yeah, so thanks to Katie and the center for involving us in that program because we see it as a great opportunity as something we're looking forward to participating in. And we also have helping us, Mr. Kernel slash Mr. Walt Kaniakua who is a PhD master's degree, multi-times over just Mr. Experience and in the world worked with Senator Noy for many years, work with, oh gosh, Tulsi Gabbard for a couple of years and you know, Senator Aronno, he's just like Mr. Experience. So he's gonna help us also work with these kids and get them, like Rachel says, get them a real solid bite into the future and make them feel like they're invested in the future and that they have a role as a leader in directing Hawaii's future even at a young age. One of the things that I was made aware of as a parent and bringing my son up was the fact that, you know, when you ask a child what they wanna be when they grow up, it seems like just kind of a fun question for us but if the child doesn't know and doesn't say anything that's actually a big sign that you've got a problem that you gotta, you know, if they don't have anything in front of them, you know, that means as a parent you're probably not exposing them to the kind of things that they need to see that to make a pick and make some choices of where they should be and if you don't have a vision in front of you that also slows down and holds you back on your learning so I think it's great that we're involved with Center for Non-Traditional Leader. Center for Tomorrow's Leaders. Tomorrow's Leaders, Tomorrow's Leaders. I'll get it one of these days. The last thing I wanted to talk about a little bit was the Blue Planet Bash. It was a great, it was a Blue Tie Bash, the first ever Blue Planet fundraiser. It was at the convention center up on the fourth floor hosted by Blue Planet Foundation. So Jeff McLean was there with his lovely significant other. Hank Rogers was there. Oh, kind of really, really rich people are there. Not me, I'm not rich, but they were rich. Doing some great stuff over helping raise funds. They had a silent auction. They had a real auction with, oh, what was the surf guy? I don't know, I hate getting old. Anyway, he's been announcing the surf forever and ever and he's a professional auctioneer. He did just an awesome job with the live auction and they raised, I believe, over $100,000 Wednesday night for that auction. It was great and it's a great cause. Blue Planet does some awesome things across our state and actually around the world. They do reach out to the other Pacific Island nations in particular who are in the same boat as Hawaii with fossil fuel dependency and trying to get the other nations off of fossil fuel dependency as well. And Hank Rogers, he's got the thing nailed. He understands economic side. He understands the environmental side. He understands just make it right for your kid's piece. He's right on the mark. So props to Hank Rogers for a great foundation and Jeff for running a great foundation and a great event on Wednesday where we actually had a blast of a time thanks to Wally and his wife. We were at their table with some great folks including Carol Kai and her significant other. We were just, it was a blast. We had a great time. And closing off the evening was on four hours notice, I guess Hank tried recruiting Wally K to do a set at the thing as part of the fundraiser. And Wally had a conflict. So he initially said he couldn't do it. And then four hours before the Blue Planet, Blue Tie Bash kicked off, Wally called Hank on the cell phone and said, hey, Bet, guess what? I can do it now. And he came over to the convention center and at the end of the evening did a short set for the group there. And it was fantastic. Wally K in person is just unbelievable. You just, he's a force to be reckoned with in the music world. When he starts singing opera, everybody just, their jaw drops to the floor. It was fun to look around. My wife, I'm looking around the corner to see, wow, she's enjoying the thing. And she had a smile on her face. She couldn't wipe off with a sledgehammer. She just was enjoying the daylight side of Wally K. So it was a great evening, great time with Blue Planet. Looking forward to next year. I told Wally, I'd actually make some Coa stuff for the silent auction. So he better keep me in mind for next year and I'll help do some stuff for Blue Planet. But it was a great, great evening and a great time. So you can still donate to Blue Planet if you want to do some donations and write them up on your taxes. Just talk to Hank Rogers and send a note to Blue Planet and look them up on the web and I'm sure they'll give you a way to put some money in there so they can keep doing what they do to save the world. And maybe even get us to Mars. You never know. Hanks is in the space too. So you might get us to Mars with Elon Musk. You never know. You never know. But hey, that about does it for us on Stand Energy Man this Friday. So thanks a lot, Rachel, for helping me pull off today's show. And we look forward to seeing everybody next week on Stand Energy Man here at Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha.